Aim: To clarify how perinatal anxiety is characterised within the current evidence base and discuss how a clearer definition and understanding of this condition may contribute to improving care provision by midwives and other healthcare professionals. Background: Perinatal anxiety is common, occurs more frequently than depression and carries significant morbidity for mother and infant. The concept of perinatal anxiety is ill-defined; this can pose a barrier to understanding, identification and appropriate treatment of the condition. Design: Concept Analysis paper. Method: Rodgers' Evolutionary Model of Concept Analysis, with review based on PRISMA principles (see Supplementary File-1). Findings: While somatic presentation of perinatal anxiety shares characteristics with general anxiety, anxiety is a unique condition within the context of the perinatal period. The precursors to perinatal anxiety are grounded in biopsychosocial factors and the sequelae can be significant for mother, foetus, newborn and older child. Due to the unique nature of perinatal anxiety, questions arise about presentation and diagnosis within the context of adjustment to motherhood, whether services meet women's needs and how midwives and other health professionals contribute to this. Most current evidence explores screening tools with little examination of the lived experience of perinatal anxiety. Conclusion: Examination of the lived experience of perinatal anxiety is needed to address the gap in evidence and further understand this condition. Service provision should account for the unique nature of the perinatal period and be adapted to meet women's psychological needs at this time, even in cases of mild or moderate distress.

Clinical academic career pathways for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals are a strategic priority for NHS England, and there has been significant investment in the National Institute of Health Research integrated clinical academic programme for non-medical healthcare professionals. Nurses, midwives and allied health professionals face numerous barriers to successfully building a clinical academic career. For those outside the integrated clinical academic programme, clinical academic career approaches are varied and often driven by individual practitioners rather than robust organisational processes or strategy. The vision of ‘future midwife’ is that midwives maximise opportunities in research and scholarship. However, there is little clarity about how these academic aspirations may be supported. This reflective lived experience discussion paper explores key issues around clinical academic midwifery careers, including how space for clinical academic midwives can be assured and the steps midwives can take to start to develop this rewarding and important career.

Kelda Folliard and Ruth Sanders discuss facilitating the conceptual leap for student midwives towards embedding evidence-based practice and research in midwifery